it's 4:00 in new york. donald trump today joined the group of skeptics on that historic summit with north korea, acknowledging that it may not work out after all. the concession came in a presser in the oval office that can best be described as a presidential dance party on the red line that he asked the doj and the fbi to investigate the counter intelligence investigation into his campaign. despite eking out concessions from the fbi and the doj, the president reupped his attacks on both agencies today. >> a lot of people are saying they had spies in my campaign. if they had spies in my campaign, that would be a disgrace to this country. that would be one of the biggest insults anyone's ever seen. it would be illegal. it would make every political event ever look like small

potatoes. i hope there weren't, frankly. but some man got paid based on what i read in the newspapers and on what you reported, some person got paid a lot of money. that's not a normal situation, the kind of money you're talking about. i think the department of justice wants to get down to it and i can tell you congress does. hopefully they'll all be able to get together. general kelly is going to be able to set up a meeting between congress and the various representatives. they'll be able to open up documents, take a look and find out what happened. if they had spies in my campaign during my campaign for political purposes, that would be unprecedented in the history of our country. >> when asked if he still supports rod rosenstein, this was his response. >> do you have confidence in rod rosenstein? >> what's your next question, please? excuse me, i have the president

of south korea here. okay. he doesn't want to hear these questions, if you don't mind. >> wow. the president's refusal to say whether he has confidence in his deputy attorney general comes at a point in time when the doj is walking a tight rope. politico writing, quote, under pressure from president trump top justice department officials have agreed to review highly classified information with congressional leaders connected to the fbi's investigation of russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders confirming today that no democrats will be invited to review that classified information in a meeting set now for thursday. rudy giuliani, who's leading negotiations with special counsel bob mueller, may have revealed the real goal of trump's demand, getting access to evidence in the russia investigation. quote, the requested documents should be made available to us on a confidential basis.

we should be at least allowed to read them so we know the evidence is being preserved. joyce vance describes the whole scene in stark terms saying, quote, in many ways this is the ultimate abuse of office. no other subject of a criminal investigation gets this information, but trump uses the fact that he was elected president by the american people to set himself above the law. again. joining us to discuss the day's developments, from the "washington post," white house bureau chief phil rutger, harry litma litman. thanks for being here, everybody. phil, take us through this day for the president where he is forced to acknowledge reality on north korea and also less than 24 hours after that meeting with

rod rosenstein and chris wray he's back to his script of fbi/doj bashing. >> yeah. well it's been an interesting day for trump, because he's battling two very different issues at the moment. he's trying to save this summit in singapore with the north koreans. in fact, he was so optimistic about that summit, those challenge coins were already created. as we learned today, the summit may very well not happen at all. there's a great deal of concern inside the white house, even more concern than the president showed in that meeting there with the south korean president. we'll see if those talks over the next couple of days are going to be able to get this going and revive what trump had hoped to be a real triumph of a meeting on june 12th. simultaneously, he's really consumed with agita over this secret fbi source that was collecting information about his

campaign at the very beginning of the russia investigation. it's why he ordered his doj to share those documents with congress on thursday. there's a great deal of concern on capitol hill that only republicans are going to be allowed to be a part of that meeting. sarah sanders told us no democrats to her knowledge had been invited to that meeting. my colleagues up on the hill are saying that even republican members of the hill, even some of president trump's allies feel that some of the key democrats in the intelligence committee should have been included and should be present to see that information that's shared at the thursday meeting that chief of staff john kelly is putting together. >> two follow-ups for you. one, even during the most acrimonious debates on policies around the war on terror, the democrats and the republicans on the intel committees always say everything. is there any precedent for intel as sensitive as the outing of an

informant not being shared with members of both parties? >> i'm not a historian of these matters, but i don't think there's much of a precedent there. it's worth pointing out the house intelligence committee has been very partisan in how it's pursued this investigation relative to the senate intelligence committee. over on the senate, richard bur the republican chairman and mark warner the democratic ranking member have worked largely in concert. they've arrived at some of the same conclusions. it's very different on the house side where adam schiff is really persona nongrata for the white house. it's chairman devin nunes, the republican from california, who's been really leading the fight here on behalf of trump to get these documents in conflict with adam schiff. >> you brought us right to the heart of the president's source of his agitation, this

firefighte informant. he said this person gained financially. that's not true from anything i've read. your paper has some reporting from your colleagues. let me read this to you. so you guys report that the white house to convene gop lawmakers to review classified information on the fbi source. the source at issue is steven hallper. a veteran of the nixon -- see, this doesn't sound like a deep state conspiracy to me. >> there's some pretty good reporting there that my colleagues put out last night about his background, his work in the intelligence community and what brought him into the trump russia investigation in mid to late 2016. he's not somebody who sort of infiltrated was the term that trump used. >> implanted was another one. >> he had a number of meetings, a number of conversations to

glean information about russia connections, which is part of his job as an intelligence asset, as the fbi was trying to figure out what it was dealing with here in the russia investigation. he was not some sort of permanent spy sort of embedded in the campaign, as the president put it in his tweet a few days ago. >> harry, i had fill take us through all the facts because the president didn't have many. i want you to take me through cause and effect. what is the effect of how having a discussion in public about an fbi informant when last wednesday the head of the fbi christopher wray, a trump appointee stestified that when e reach the day that we can no longer protect confidential informants and their families, america is less safe. >> america is less safe. it's a bone chilling development. the justice department is under a shelling from the white house.

it's like london 1941 there. some bombs hit big, some bombs hit small. this one, to my mind, is the biggest pom bomb of all. a confidential informant is the coin of the realm for the fbi. it was astonishing to me to be reading in the newspaper biographical details. you can only guess what kind of job the fbi and the cia has around the world to get people to help the united states ferret out dangers to them. this is the most dangerous development in the ongoing war between the white house and the department of justice we have had so far. >> let me defend the "washington post." after several other news organizations had published his name, they went ahead and did so. do you think this was rod rosenstein trying to keep his

job so he couldly live to fieg the bigger war or do you think he sacrificed too much? >> both maybe. i have criticized the deputy attorney general before for kind of playing ball, especially with nunes and the house republicans here. but in general i thought his move to refer the other matter to the inspector general was shrewd and sound. this one really seems like a different kind of rubicon for the department of justice. to department former insiders, this is really a line never before crossed. especially to the house republicans, to the fact that it's only they and not the democrats, really puts the lie

to the notion this is any kind of legitimate oversight. they're just being shills for a suspect in a criminal investigation. this is really troubling. >> from the "new york times," this self-interested assault is doing damage to american law enforcement. like deputy attorney general rod rosenstein and chris wray, both republicans, both trump appointees, to stand up to the president and defend these institutions. are they doing that in this move? >> i think that the proper way to judge this -- i think your question -- i hate to accuse of a false binary, but i do think there's a little bit of a false binary. i think the reality is that rod rosenstein is in the middle of one of the most extraordinary high human dramas we've seen in politics in a long time where on a sunday afternoon when the

president engaged in an unprecedented act, the guy who's in charge of this thing on which the fate of the presidency, some of the basic norms that govern our country are in play. and he has hours to decide what he's going to do to try to -- >> you're talking about the original tweet. >> the original i hereby order -- this is an incredible thing the president did on sunday afternoon. if you're rod rosenstein, you have to figure out how do i protect bob mueller? what compromises can i make? what will they buy me, what's the right place to come down? or if i can make compromises that allow me to keep my job, is the president trying to force me to resign? many on sunday looked at that tweet and said in any normal administration, the attorney general would see that and say this is an actionable -- the president is challenging me in this way, i must resign.

is that part of the president's motive, rod rosenstein must determine. how do i keep my job in order to protect bob mueller and what do i have to give away? and is this the moment for confrontation? is this the moment to go in and say i'm not resigning, you have to fire me. at some point, that fight's going to happen. at some point in this war, the justice department and the fbi are going to have to stand up to donald trump. is that the moment when it should have happened? i don't know the answer, but it's a very very complicated set of calculations he's making. he's clearly making them. i don't think any of us is really in a position to judge whether he's given away too much. i do know those are the calculations in play. they have enormous mistakes. we don't know everything that rod rosenstein knows about bob mueller and where that

investigation stands. >> this is what i heard from a close friend of christopher wray's, who said of course he will not quit. you have no idea what larger fights he believes he needs to be there to wage, what larger potential infringements the bureau could face from this white house that he would want to be this to protect them from. where are we that something that, that hereby demand tweet, is so bad we think it could get worse and the department of justice has to gut this out. where are we? >> the deputy attorney general thinks it's worse. that's why he's going along with it perhaps to fight a battle down the road. the president heard that question, do you have confidence in deputy attorney general rod rosenstein, i'm not going to answer that. he talked about the alleged spy in his campaign. he was happy to weigh in on that and deliver threats on that. he didn't want to give a vote of confidence.

rosenstein knows how perilous his position is. i talked to rudy giuliani in the last day or so. i asked him, are you concerned about the chilling effect this may have on confidential sources, confidence informants? will people be afraid to work for the department of justice or the fbi considering the pressure from the white house that their cover may be blown and so on? he basically said, i'm the president's lawyer, that's not my concern. my concern is donald trump. this is a president that is consumed with preserving his presidency, not much else. >> this is not a secret strategy that rudy giuliani plotted in private on a secure line. this is a strategy he's been telegraphing since he started. their strategy is to smear and malign the fbi and the justice department so that whatever

shall come to pass in the coming months is simply muddied up for trump's base of voters? cynical at best, is it legal? >> right. look, i don't know if it's blatantly illegal. it's certainly true that no defendant has any right to see this kind of evidence against him preindictment. basically rosenstein has one card only to play. it's a strong card. but once he plays it, there aren't any more strategies that he can employ. one thing he might be thinking about is when he can provoke a confrontation that would be subject to review in the courts. if he can do something that can somehow gin up some third party to say you've gone too far mr.

president, having someone on his side when the congress and the president are so manifestly against him, that might be one of the things in his mind strategically. >> i want to cover a little more ground with you on the speed with which this tweet was issued on sunday morning and then turned into policy. in the good old days there were a few guardrails around. the president would tweet something and people could intervene and slow it down. i think it was maybe 26 hours from that tweet that brought about hair on fire condemnation from multiple former cia directors and fbi officials. within 27 hours yesterday sarah huckabee sanders issuing a statement of policy and announcing a meeting that kelly would chair but turns out wasn't

invited to where these documents would be turned over to the loudest critics of the justice department and the fbi. >> in the old days presidents just didn't tweet things like this to begin with. but the speed has been extraordinary. it's been shorter than even you just laid out. the president issued that i hereby order tweet on sometime sunday and within a few hours we reporters were getting notice from the department of justice that rod rosenstein was going to be adding this to the inspector general's sort of list of things to be investigating. so they were taking some mediate action. it wasn't the full action that the president wanted but it was being very responsive to what the president said from his house on sunday on twitter.

it's incredibly fast in part because the president demand that speed. he makes split decisions based on impulse and how he's feeling andpects everyone who works for him -- he thinks people at the justice department work for him. he expects them to respond in due time. >> i just have this feeling as you watch this -- we have seen for the last year we talk about how fast things now move and the pace of the news cycle. i've been doing this 30 years now and i've never seen anything like it. just last week the extraordinary cascade of news, so many stories about michael cohen, so many stories about mueller, this

"washington post" is breaking three or four stories a day that used to be the kind of stories that would consume a month. >> and the a.p. >> the "new york times." everybody, we're all going yeoman's work here. we're really out of the slow motion constitution crisis moment now. things are happening really fast in the press, at the white house, with the department of justice. i think we're going to see in the next few months if it's conceivable an acceleration of this crisis to the point where things are going to start to -- there's going to become a kind of out of body experience of watching this. we're coming to the real opponent of crisis now and the moment of where everything is going to get tested. it feels like that to me. we're in a different place now. it's going to get really weird in the next couple of months. >> i agree.

i was about to say you heard it here first, hurtling toward the end from john heilman. that's your next book, right? thank you so much for scaring us. when we come back, maybe they should have waited a little longer before printing that challenge coin typically issued to commemorate accomplishments with donald trump and kim jong-un's faces on it. that summit now in question. also the commander in chief goes rogue on the open information highway using a cell phone that's as vulnerable as, i don't know, home e-mail servers? stay with us. i never thought i'd say this, but i found bladder leak

underwear that's actually pretty. always discreet boutique. hidden inside is a super absorbent core that quickly turns liquid to gel. so i feel protected... ...and pretty. always discreet boutique.

at fidelity, our online u.s. equity trades are just $4.95. so no matter what you trade, or where you trade, you'll only pay $4.95. fidelity. open an account today. but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. the name to remember.

do you deserve the nobel prize, do you think? >> everyone thinks so, but i would never say it. >> everybody thinks so. that was just two weeks ago in reference to the upcoming meeting between trump and kim jong-un. but today in the oval office with trump and south korean president moon, the president admitted that summit is in jeopardy. >> we are working on something. you know, there's a chance that it will work out. there's a chance, a substantial chance it won't work out. i don't want to waste a lot of time and i'm sure he doesn't want to waste a lot of time. there's a very substantial chance it won't work out. that's okay. that doesn't mean it won't work out over a period of time. there's a good chance we'll have the meeting. >> a word salad.

what was that? >> all i kept thinking in my head is -- i'm a philadelphia sports fan and i kept hearing my dad saying don't mess with the juju and don't print the coin before the meeting happened. >> which he literally did. we have a picture of it. i think they come out of the military. this is one side of the coin meant to commemorate the triumph of the trump/kim jong-un summit, which is now until question according to donald trump. >> did you ever print up challenge coins in the bush white house? >> there were challenge coins. >> for diplomatic events? >> we went by the don't jinx it rule. things were not printed. >> who initiates the coin? is there a meeting where they go i think this is something we make a coin about? this guys under investigation for russia collusion -- >> this is just the kind of thing that we're only talking

about it because it fuels the narrative that the president again put out there that this is the accomplishment he was going to sail to reelection and victory on. >> this is something that the president has been consumed with, is the success of this summit. this is going to happen. this is going to be his mark in the history books. we had a report recently -- we know that in the first months of his administration, he really thought that middle east peace would be his big ticket item. he sort of realized there were some intractable issues there. jared kushner did not walk in and save the day. >> he doesn't even have clearance anymore. >> this became the new focus. he wanted it for the history books. he also wanted it for a win for the midterms. suddenly you can see he is thrown, he is upset. >> we always talk about this

buffoonery of trump. he set up a win-win for himself. he put this in motion. even if it falls off the tracks, he can still say i opened the dialogue. i was willing to go there. obviously if there's a summit, he wins. if there's no summit, he wins. if i'm him, i go, look, obama was asleep at the wheel. we're engaged and this is the beginning of a process. even in his buffoonery he's able to spin it out as a potential win. >> i don't know about the buffoonery theory. i don't think it's an obvious win-win. i've seen administrations engage in this issue for my entire time in covering makes. there have been supposed victories and then backsliding. historically that's been the whole pattern of north korea. i'm focused on reality, which is

is the president actually going to accomplish anything or not? he thought it was a win-win just to go. he sees there's a possibility that he could be embarrassed here and he might look like a pu buffoon for having placed so much on this and coming home with nothing. if that risk was not in his mind, he would be full steam ahead. >> the "new york times" reported that aids who recently left the administration say trump has resisted the kind of detailed briefings about missile programs that presidents obama and george w. bush regularly sat through. we know he doesn't read the pdb. it gives new meaning to flying blind. we're talking about the ludicrous aspects of this story but everyone in and around the korean peninsula lives in fear of their lives. he's obviously not briefed in on

the substance of his own own of denuclearization. can you bring us back to the substance of this setback, phil? we lost your audio. i'm going to throw that question to jonathan. >> give me the question again. [ laughter ] >> nobody's listening to the host. i love the regulars. >> i was looking at my phone. >> you're a reporter. my point is we're talking about the buffoonery. we're talking about the coin, how he doesn't know anything about the substance. times reported that he's not read in on any of the details of his own stated goal of denuclearizing the korean peninsula. there's still an entire region of the world that lives in fear. >> the stakes are much higher than a political win, of course.

if we're back to fire and fury, there's no way this was a win. the president right now is taking a more reasonable approach in terms of thinking if this summit will be a success or not. that's only a fallback from the bluster in the months prior. he's more concerned about the optics of singapore. what does it look like, how can we suspensefully dole out morsels of news rather than the logistics of being briefed on what kim jong-un wants when he comes to the table. this is what north korea does. they tease like it will be a success, and then they pull back. that's a negotiating tactic. there are going to be limits to what they're going to give away. to this point president trump does not seem that engaged in actually learning the strategy of what this meeting is going to be. >> a north korean nuclear test in october, how's that going to look like a win? >> right. and to your point this is the president's focus, which is why we cover it. but to your even better point, no offense, there are lives in

the balance. i love that no one listens to me. >> now i know how to operate here. >> you have no idea how sorry i am about your mike going out. coming up, personal cell phone -- or is it? this farmer's morning starts in outer space. where satellites feed infrared images of his land into a system built with ai. he uses watson to analyze his data with millions of weather forecasts from the cloud, and iot sensors down here, for precise monitoring of irrigation. it's a smart way to help increase yields, all before the rest of us get out of bed.

and back pain made it hard to sleep and get up on time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a safe sleep aid... ...plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. i'm back. aleve pm for a better am. i had a spanish teacher in high school who knew i could do more, and so she pushed me and pushed me and pushed me, and she was right. they don't only teach me about what we learn inside the classroom. they teach me about life. the janitor is really friendly. he asks how's my day, and he tells me how his day was. my own teachers inspired me to become a teacher. they always pushed me to do better. they never give up on me. they're extraordinary! narrator: exactly why the california teachers association believes strong public schools make a better california for all of us.

her server was easily hacked by foreign governments, perhaps even by her financial backers in communist china. sure, they have it. putting all of america and our citizens in danger. the state department was trying to cover up hillary's crimes of sending ch ing classified infor on a server our enemies could access. hillary's the one who endangered national security by sending classified information on an insecure server.

>> it's like he catches amnesia. it was the center piece of donald trump's campaign strategy to reinforce over and over that hillary clinton put america at risk with her reckless use of a private e-mail server as secretary of state. "lock her up" was a regular chant at trump rallies. fast forward to this afternoon, quote, too inconvenient, trump goes rogue on security. the president has two phones, one capable of making calls, the other for tweeting and reading the news. while aides have urged the president to swap out the twitter phone on a monthly basis, trump has resisted their entreaties, saying it was too inconvenient. it is unclear how often trump's call capable phones, which are essentially used as burner phones are swapped out. what? burner phones for the commander

in chief? >> i do have some experience with burner phones. >> why? >>kidding. >> what's a burner phone? >> it's like a phone you buy at cvs or something. obama had his phone checked every 30 days. >> i've got that. you reference obama. trump's call capable cell phone has a camera and a microphone unlike the white house issued cell phones by obama. hackers could use them to monitor the president's movements. the gop tracker is disabled. well, that's nice. >> beyond being a hypocrite, he operates above the law in his mind. they come to him and say this is the way it's done. i don't care.

this is one more example of what is a thing that happens to donald trump that in any way affects his 41%? someone will hear this, not around this table, and? okay. that's the way he rolls. yeah, and? that's the story here. >> isn't there a point where the trump brand was about saying that which is rude. the brand wasn't about being a big fat hypocrite. it was being blunt with the american people about just how swampy d.c. is. this does seem dangerously off brand for the president. >> him saying it is inconvenient to change his phone, we would all agree it's inconvenient to change your phone. >> he's not like us. he doesn't wait in line at starbucks. >> exactly. he's going to say i don't have to do any of these things. none of these rules apply to me. all of us around this table would say that's insane.

>> just to elucidate the degree of hypocrisy, what you really need is you need to show the hillary clinton sot string from 2015 to 2016 where she gave her explanation for why she used a private server over and over again. it was set up because it was convenient. it was inconvenient to switch. he was attacking her not just for being sloppy. her precise explanation for why she did what she did, which he regarded as a reason to criticize her, is now the explanation he's giving for why he's doing the same thing she did. >> here's my point. >> i don't care. i want to stay focused on reality and the truth. someone needs to call the president on his hypocritical bs when it happens. >> we do it every day.

that's our point. our point is to live in reality. the reality trump has created is these things don't matter. >> i love you, but i don't think that nothing matters. >> right. >> i think everything matters. >> these trump voters have a breaking point. >> this is not it. that's my point. >> that's fine. but we are not living in a world where these people can be dehumanized to the point where blatant hypocrisy is something we don't talk about. >> we need to talk about it's not making a difference. we need to not stop talk about it but not be amazed and say, here goes another one. we get that what's built into the trump brand is this ability to skate in places where nobody has skated before. where do we have to extend that rink? >> i don't think we extend the rink but i do think it's our job

to expose the thin i do think hypocrisy is one of them. >> information security of hillary's e-mails, dirty international dealings of the clinton foundation, bill clinton's tarmac meeting with loretta lynch to influence a federal investigation. what do we have right now? donald trump with his unsecure cell phone. we have these meetings with trump tower with middle eastern officials trying to influence policy by donations. and of course we have meddling with a federal investigation with the ongoing russia probe including this meeting summit at the white house this week. that is all on display from the president in the last 24 hours. >> i can't get a break with dondo donny angry at me. >> i'm not angry. how do we move the discussion to

accept as a given in the mind of the trump voter that this is all baked in, where do we have to move the discussion, where do we have to open up a new investigation that maybe is not baked into that 43%? >> our job can't be to make a calculation about what will or won't persuade any given voter of any given thing. our job has to be to call bs when there's bs. then it's up to voters to decide. our job is to call people on when they lie bla tantantly we to call them on it. >> there's a difference between my job and your job. you give it straight. my mind is immediately going to as a businessman, as a brander, as an influencer, this is great, got it. the consumer is turning it off. how can we move the news, not create the news in a way that

maybe they're going to listen more? that's my point. >> let me bring you back into the shout fest. i think the passions around whether or not you cover the trump voters, because it turned out to be true that donald trump could walk out on 5th avenue and shoot someone. that turned out to be the truest, most honest thing he said in his entire candidacy. i just want your judgment as a reporter who covered the trump family and people very, very close to the president, you don't back off because it may or may not matter. but i want to ask you what you think about the president's central traits. he didn't run as a guy with an agenda. it's clear from all the reporting he has no clue on any policy. but he did run as a guy with a brand. part of that brand was authenticity. stories like this seem to chip away at his brand of

authenticity. >> i completely agree with you. you were talking about the th t campaign. i don't think any of those three things were why people voted for him. this general notion that he is full of it is going to cut into that authenticity. i don't know that this exact story is going to be the thing that cuts into it. generally, yes. if he is seen as someone who's not really there for the truth or the guy who says anything that's on his mind regardless of politics, that is what turns people off. >> that is what turns him into everything he ran against. >> his poll numbers are a point or two higher than the day he got elected, so -- >> there you have it. up next, it's been over a year since the nation's top intelligence officials gave their assessment of russian interference in the election. somehow the homeland security secretary appears not to have

gotten the message. i no wondering, "what if?" uncertainties of hep c. i let go of all those feelings. because i am cured with harvoni. harvoni is a revolutionary treatment for the most common type of chronic hepatitis c. it's been prescribed to more than a quarter million people. and is proven to cure up to 99% of patients who've have had no prior treatment with 12 weeks. certain patients can be cured with just 8 weeks of harvoni. before starting harvoni, your doctor will test to see if you've ever had hepatitis b,

which may flare up and cause serious liver problems during and after harvoni treatment. tell your doctor if you've ever had hepatitis b, a liver transplant, other liver or kidney problems, hiv or any other medical conditions and about all the medicines you take including herbal supplements. taking amiodarone with harvoni can cause a serious slowing of your heart rate. common side effects of harvoni include tiredness, headache and weakness. ready to let go of hep c? ask your hep c specialist about harvoni.

i've been making blades here at gillette for 20 years. there's a lot of innovation that goes into making america's #1 shave. precision machinery and high-quality materials from around the world. nobody else even comes close. now starting at $7.99. gillette. the best a man can get.

do you have any reason to doubt the 2016 intelligence community assessment that said it was vladimir putin who tried to meddling with the election to help president trump? >> i do not beliefve i've seen that conclusion that the specific intent was to help president trump win. i'm not aware of that. but i do generally have no reason to doubt any intelligence assessment. >> homeland security secretary kirsten nielson claiminged to she has not seen an intel assessment released more than one year ago. one, putin and the russian government developed a clear preference for president trump. two, putin and the government aspired to help president-elect trump's election chances when

possible possible. the report add that is the fbi, cia and the nsa all believe that judgment. or that the administration is ignoring intelligence it doesn't want to hear. it seems to leave a third possibility open. a woman with her job security a little bit in question in washington circles, you know, may be trying to toe the line on questions of russia, where the president never likes to say it was the 500 pound guy. certainly the person in charge of -- i think the homeland security secretary has a pretty big role in protecting her elections. saying she never heard that russia put their finger on the scale is alarming. >> highly alarming. to the extent there's anything that's been powerful -- the small positive things we've seen

come out of the thing we were talking about at the top of the show has been these on the record assertions of trump appointees that, yes, even all the people trump appointed who have looked at this now say did purpose, to heurt hillary clinton, to help donald trump. that now for the first time is fully laid into the record. so to have someone like that at dhs seeming to be ignorant about that or seeming to be playing politics around it or seeming to be more concerned with covering her rear end is obviously troubling. and i don't know what the motives are. i don't know whether this person is just out of the loop, has been on vacation, but it's disturbing. >> she's under a lot of pressure. >> yes. >> i screw up on live tv. but, you've also got the mueller indictments. >> yes. >> 13 russian nationals, who were indicted for election meddling. you also have the facebook hearings, which i would assume the secretary of homeland security would have paid attention to, where it was revealed that facebook sold ads

to people who were sewing divisions in our democracy. i mean, that -- >> i think your choice three as to what went on here is right. this is a cabinet secretary who is not in the president's favor, who took an aggressive tongue lashing at a cabinet meeting recently behind closed doors about immigration and about illegal immigrants still coming over the border, why has the wall not been built, things like that. she is someone the president has never quite liked or trusted, believing that john kelly sort of foisted her upon him in that role. and this is her -- >> he thinks she's a bush plant. >> that's the next thing i was going to say. another slur he uses on her. >> a slur. >> sorry. other than that, it's those things and her playing to an audience of one. she is trying to get back in his good graces by saying something that she knows is not true. >> it's disturbing that she's carrying about that audience of one more than the autopsy of american people. and really the global audience. this is a message that she should not be bungling. and that she's speaking directly

to the president here is completely off-base and -- >> and if she were under oath, if that were testimony, she would have a sessions problem. we have some breaking news right now about stormy daniels' attorney and donald trump's longtime personal lawyer, michael cohen, that we want to bring to you. michael avenatti says that cohen is leaking audio of stormy daniels to the media. avenatti telling a federal judge he's concerned that cohen or members of cohen's team have started leaking recordings seized by the fbi during their searches, and he says the recordings relate to stormy daniels. he writes, quote, we think that these select leaks are meant to paint a false narrative relating to mr. cohen and his business dealings. at the same time, he is not disclosing numerous other recordings of him speaking with individuals such as mr. trump. avenatti did not detail how he is aware of these alleged leaks and how he is aware of the content of the audio recordings or how he believes the recordings were part of the material seized by the fbi. i'll come back to you, because you've been covering michael cohen, his whole experience

before and after that search. do you have any reporting to add to this picture coming out of a court filing from michael avenatti? >> what we do know and has been reported before, that michael cohen recorded conversations. and when the government executed its search warrants last month, those recordings may or may not has been some of the things that were swept up. they were on probably electronic devices that were either in his office or his hotel room or his home. and i'm sure that those recordings are somewhere in the government's possession. >> i want to talk about the avenatti brand a little bit. today, there was also a $10 million judgment that he lost against ex-partners, where he owed them money. there's a lot of shady stuff out there. i still think michael avenatti is a head fake to the real issue. donald trump has slept with a lot of women. he's paid off a lot of women. that's not going to change the way anybody feels about him or take him out of office. and avenatti to me is becoming a little bit of a carnival side show. he is a side show, and i do believe, and i speak to michael all the time and i'm not defending michael in any way, michael has explicitly said to

me that so many of the things that he's out there saying are complete, absolutely fabrications and falsehoods. and i think you'll start to see that. my concern with avenatti is he's taking everyone's eye off the ball. the story here is russia collusion, not donald trump and porn stars. >> let's take the politics out of it. this came from tom winter based on a legal filing. this is, at least, so far, a legal development and there is a filing where in which michael avenatti has told a judge that he's concerned that michael cohen has started to leak select audio recordings meant to undermine one of the parties in the in -- michael avenatti's client. i'm not trying to have a political debate with you about michael avenatti's brand, but just as a legal development, this seems very trumpian, if michael -- it seems very much onbrand, to borrow something from donny, for a tactic as somebody who served as donald trump's fixer for manner decade would engage in. >> i appreciate that donny in his conversations with michael cohen, that he's accurately representing what michael cohen

thinks, which is that michael avenatti makes stuff up. on basis of the public record to date, the things that michael avenatti has alleged and said, particularly the most momentous thing he put out, when he put out the assessment that there was this slush fund, that was true. and that it -- >> so said all of donald trump's friends. >> well, not just true, but true, the companies that paid into the llc, that were trying to buy access to donald trump. they have now come forward and admitted that they made those payments. people have been fired because of that. there are valid questions that anyone -- if you're michael avenatti, you put yourself forward the way he has, there is going to be scrutiny. i think he knows there's going to be scrutiny and there are things in his past that are now coming to light that are problematic for his brand. but on the basis of what he has alleged so far. information he's put forward in the public about michael cohen, as far as i know, nothing he's alleged has turned out to be false, let alone a fabrication. so i don't know about this court filing right now. and i don't know where it's going to go. but as emily just said, the

thing about tapes and michael cohen having them, that's out there. and we know that on the basis of all of the reporting, some that she's done and some that others have done, we know that there are take place. and i think some of the stuff that's in those tapes is going to turn out to be pertinent to matters that relate to michael cohen's criminal case and potentially the president. >> i was also struck by the fact that one of the hall marks of the mueller investigation is that there haven't been any leaks. if this is true. if there's starting to be leaks in an investigation run out of the southern district of new york, that would differentiate from the mueller probe. >> we've learned very little of the mueller probe before he wanted it out there. i mean, the idea you said there about avenatti revealing the sources of cohen's money, that was something that mueller knew for months before it was released publicly in the last couple of weeks. this does seem a little why with the sdny. one would be wonder if mueller would be reluctant to refer

things to them coming forward. we'll sneak in our last break. we'll be right back. if yor crohn's symptoms are holding you back, and your current treatment hasn't worked well enough, it may be time for a change. ask your doctor about entyvio, the only biologic developed

and approved just for uc and crohn's. entyvio works at the site of inflammation in the gi tract and is clinically proven to help many patients achieve both symptom relief and remission. infusion and serious allergic reactions can happen during or after treatment. entyvio may increase risk of infection, which can be serious. pml, a rare, serious, potentially fatal brain infection caused by a virus may be possible. this condition has not been reported with entyvio. tell your doctor if you have an infection, experience frequent infections or have flu-like symptoms or sores. liver problems can occur with entyvio. if your uc or crohn's treatment isn't working for you, ask your gastroenterologist about entyvio. entyvio. relief and remission within reach. ♪now i'm gonna tell my momma ♪that i'm a traveller

♪i'm gonna follow the sun♪ ♪now i'm gonna tell my momma ♪that i'm a traveller ♪i'm gonna follow the sun transitions™ light under control™ it's just a burst pipe, i could fix (laugh)ns™ no. with claim rateguard your rates won't go up just beacuase of a claim. i totally could've... (wife) nope! switching to allstate is worth it.

look at that rain. my thanks to jonathan, donny, john heilemann. that does it for our hour. i'm nicole wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi, chuck. >> you feeling golden? are you readying for round four? >> you know, i'm not engaging. we shouldn't fight about sports. >> come on, it's the only thing that we can at least bring people together on. >> it's the only thing that america has left. >> warriors and celtics in the finals, warriors win in a sweep. >> ouch. >> prediction. >> i agree with you on a celtics sweep, but the celtics won't be there. good-bye! if it's tuesday, the constitutional crisis alarm bells are ringing, but is anybody listening? tonight, fatal distraction. are the president's systemic attacks on the justice department undermining the rule of law as